What kind of user are you? Take a step back and ask yourself what you need from a Linux distribution. The answer isn’t as obvious as you might think, and which distribution you do choose will have an effect on that distribution’s future, and indirectly, that of Linux.

An anonymous reader touts a blog posting up at PC World titled “Trademarks: The Hidden Menace.” Keir Thomas asks why open source advocates are keen to suggest patent and copyright reform, yet completely ignore the issue of trademarks, which can be just as corrosive to the freedom that open source projects strive to embody. “Even within the Linux community, trademarking can be used as obstructively as copyright and patenting to further business ends. … Is this how open source is supposed to work? Restricted redistribution? Tight control on who can compile software and still be able to call it by its proper name? … Trademarking is almost totally incompatible with the essential freedom offered by open source. Trademarking is a way of severely limiting all activity on a particular product to that which you approve of. … If an open source company embraces trademarks then it embraces this philosophy. On the one hand it advocates freedom, and [on] the other it takes it away.”

Uh-oh. The C library is an essential core component of any Unix-like operating system, and for Debian to switch from the well-established Glibc is big news. This blog post explains the reasons behind the move to EGLIBC, noting technical aspects such as a consistent stable branch, support for different shells and the ability to optimise for size

ruphus13 sends in an OStatic article outlining the plans of the state of South Carolina, inspired by the One Laptop Per Child project, to provide laptops to local elementary school children. “The South Carolina Department of Education and the non-profit Palmetto Project have teamed up to get a laptop in the hands of every elementary school student in South Carolina… The OLPC/SC hopes to distribute as many as 50,000 laptops this spring to eligible students. The effort is underwritten and managed by the Palmetto Project, whose mission is to ‘put new and creative ideas to work in South Carolina.’ While low-performing school districts with limited resources are a special focus for the OLPC/SC, the group is adamant on one point: There are no free laptops. In order to receive a laptop, children need to give a small monetary donation — the project coordinators say a dollar or two is sufficient.”It’s not obvious from browsing around the OLPC/SC site what software the XO laptops will be running; but by following links one gets the impression that they will be powered by Linux, not XP.

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Mozilla Links “Mozilla has started a new project to make Firefox split in several processes at a time: one running the main user interface (chrome), and another or several others running the web content in each tab. Like Chrome or Internet Explorer 8 which have implemented this behavior to some degree, the main benefit would be the increase of stability: a single tab crash would not take down the whole session with it, as well as performance improvements in multiprocessor systems that are progressively becoming the norm. The project, which lacks a catchy name like other Mozilla projects (like TaskFox, Ubiquity, or Chocolate Factory) is coordinated by long time Mozillian, Benjamin Smedberg; and also integrated by Joe Drew, Jason Duell, Ben Turner, and Boris Zbarsky in the core team. According to the loose roadmap published, a simple implementation that works with a single tab (not sessions support, no secure connections, either on Linux or Windows, probably not even based on Firefox) should be reached around mid-July.”

Yes, there is more to Linux than Ubuntu. As you are probably aware, there are many different types of Linux to choose from, even though not all get the attention they deserve. This guide sheds more light on some of the more common distributions in use today and covers the distinct advantages or disadvantages of each.

From content management systems to web portal creation tools, Linux has just about everything you need. Among those thousands of tools, a select few stand out as the best of the best. Listed below you will find my top 10 must-haves for Linux server/web/cloud-based tools.